Today, Radio Alhara is marking five years of operation by playing 24 hours of archival material from its home in Bethlehem, Palestine.
As I write this, Jad Atoui’s heart-wrenching mix is playing – thanks, Jad! There’s not much more to say about the situation in Gaza and West Bank in a week with darkness beyond words. This afternoon, the local Ministry of Health reports that Israeli attacks have killed 506 Palestinians, including 200 children, and injured 909 Palestinians in the time span of March 18 – March 20, as shared at 1 pm CET. (A notification popped up in my WhatsApp as I was about to write this.) Those numbers are widely understood to be undercounts because they don’t include those trapped under the rubble. (If you want to read what the Gazan Ministry of Health is and how it works, here’s one good explainer. Apart from not being relevant, it’s not even technically accurate to describe this as “Hamas-controlled,” as PBS details with some nuance.)
There’s no way to make any of this make sense for anyone, and it’s happening with US support and international silence and inaction – meaning it involves all of us. The last weeks still saw violence – in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and even Israeli-occupied Lebanon. But now everything is unimaginably worse, as Israel unleashes full-scale attacks and blocks aid, fuel, and water.
Through every nightmare, Palestinian voices have remained constant – on the land and in the diaspora. Community radio is one way to amplify those voices. Radio Alhara broadcasts from the occupied West Bank, and now its home at Wonder Cabinet. There’s another forgotten war that continues to rage there, one that is connected to what’s happening in Gaza.
RADIO ALHARA
5TH ANNIVERSARY
24 HOURS ARCHIVAL LINE UP
20.3.2025 & 21.03.2025
8AM TO 8AM
RAI YOUSEF X MOTHANNA
FILMISHMISH – NICOLÁS JAAR
FILMISHMISH – SARRA WILD
ODDZ FOR DIRAR
SONIC LIBERATION FRONT – LAMIN FOFANA
FILMISHMISH – DEENA ABDELWAHED
GALLIANI COMUN RADIO
SONIC LIBERATION FRONT – JAD ATOUI
CARL CRAIG FOR RADIO ALHARA
SONIC LIBERATION FRONT – FATEN KANAAN SONIC LIBERATION FRONT – SPACE AFRIKA
HATEM IMAM – BUSINESS DINNER 11
RADIO ALHARA FOUNDERS COLLECTIVE MIX
ANDREW COLLINGWOOD [LIVE]
ALAHLI THIKR JAMAAH
FILMISMISH – MANGO THIEF
FILMISHIMISH – KHYAM ALLAMI ABU NEIL ROMANTIC ARAB MAN
RADIO ALHARA FOUNDERS COLLECTIVE MIX 2
DAMOS ROOM MELK FT LIXO
SONIC LIBERATION FRONT – ISAAC SOTTO
NESA AZADIKHAH
YARA ASMAR MONTHLY SHOW OF DEC 2022
VOICES ACROSS BORDERS STEFAN CHRISTOFF DANG A DANG RADIO NECESSARY FINCTIONS
CHARBEL BABER FOR BEIRUT
For additional listening, our friends of Al Berlin are on the air on Refuge Worldwide today:
If you’re able to get to Rome, Wonder Cabinet and Alhara are coming to you; you can catch Sounds of Places in person this week:
I don’t want to leave this without a call to action. Just like in music-making, we should never feel silenced or powerless. (One way to look at music is as an exercise in making ourselves heard.) Much of our readership is, like me, a US citizen – you can reach out to elected representatives and demand that the violence stops. These get counted, even when offices may seem unfriendly. You can also write letters to the editor (which do often get printed, partly because people tend not to take the time to write well-reasoned letters).
Rather than being overwhelmed by too many fundraisers, I want to highlight the call for support from Al Jawad Camp in Gaza. They’ve incredibly continued even though Israel has not allowed aid to enter Gaza since the start of the month. A lot of the activities they do with the kids have been musical and creative, so I feel as musicians and artists, we have a special connection to their work. Folks from the Berlin community have worked with them at length (see below).
There are two direct links, one for GoFundMe and one for PayPal; both are easily accessible for international donations:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/5w5rfk-Help-displaced-children-in-Gaza-learn
Here in Berlin, the local effort to produce A Million Kites, which collects the messages of children in Gaza – many of them now injured or killed – has also supported fundraising for the camp.
All we can do is keep talking about how to respond and change this reality. I certainly can’t sit in Berlin and deny or enable this genocide.
And to Radio Alhara, thanks for being there these five years. We owe it to you to make the next five years different.